


that original lifeline

by lupinely



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's hair is matted and damp, his eyes closed, dark like bruises in the hollows of his face. He’s in a bad way. A real bad way, and Sam can tell; he’s seen this before, this sort of slow dying.</p><p>(Sam's blood type is O negative. It was useful during his service, and it's useful now.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	that original lifeline

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for: blood, medical procedures, needles, hospitals, etc. Nothing graphic, but why not be safe. No one dies!
> 
> (You know that scene in 'Mad Max: Fury Road'? Yeah.)

 

 

 

 

 

The first time it happens is an accident of necessity. Well, of course it’s an accident, sort of: a fucked up emergency situation, because otherwise they would be in a hospital and Steve would have a bunch of nurses and doctors taking care of him instead of a fuck up ex-soldier whose hands are shaking. And it’s not the first time that Sam has done this, not really, except that it’s the first time with Steve, it’s the first time with Natasha flying the helicopter out of the hot zone with her face as pale as milk, her breathing uneven, and it’s not the first time that Sam has been afraid that someone he cares about might die, but every time that happens is as horrible and gut-twisting as the first time, every time.

Steve is bleeding. All over the fucking place. More blood than Sam has ever seen in his life, and he’s seen blood before. He’s not squeamish, but he is scared out of his goddamn mind, that’s for sure. Sam is not a medic; he had his fair share of practice with stuff like this on his tours overseas but mostly his job as pararescue was get in and get other people out. Other people did the patching up later, if there was time. If there wasn’t, then there was this. Just like this.

Natasha talks Sam through the first part, which is to stop the bleeding, or at least slow it. They’re so far from any sort of help out here, alone in the huge black sky. They wanted to go in dark, they wanted to do this without Fury’s help, or Hill’s, because they’re looking for Bucky and they don’t want any following their trail. Mistake, maybe. Looking down at Steve, who is unconscious on the floor of the helicopter, bleeding all over the fucking place, Sam thinks it was probably a huge fucking mistake.

Two bullet holes, right in Steve’s stomach. Not a good place. Not a good place at all.

“Cut away the fabric." Natasha's voice is steady, but she’s not looking at Sam, staring straight ahead. “You’ve got to bandage the wounds and get the bleeding to stop.”

Okay. Sam can do that. He’s done that much before.

Natasha tells him what bandages to use, how to bind Steve’s injuries so that the pressure slows the bleeding. Sam almost asks her to do it because his hands are shaking so bad, but he doesn’t trust himself to fly the helicopter right now, and Natasha’s directions are good, clear enough for him to follow, step one, step two, step three. Keep all of Steve’s blood on the inside where it belongs.

Finally, that’s done. But Steve doesn’t wake up, hardly seems to stir.

“Nat,” Sam says, trying to keep his voice steady.

She glances over, once, and her mouth thins. “We’re in a dead zone,” she says quietly. “There’s nowhere to land. I have to keep going.”

“How long?” Sam asks desperately.

Natasha shakes her head, as if she doesn’t want to respond. “Two hours.”

“Will he make it that long?”

Natasha, this time, does not answer.

Christ. Sam starts rolling up his sleeve, his hands still trembling but at least he has a purpose now. He starts unspooling the IV line from the med kit that Natasha provided and presses his fingertips to the crook of his left elbow, looking for a vein.

Natasha, uncertain. “Sam?”

“I’m O negative,” he tells her. Gets the needle in and lifts the IV tubing so the blood will flow properly. “Universal donor.”

Her eyes, frightened but determined. “You ever do this before?”

“A few times,” Sam says. Which is true, but somehow, practice never seems to help with situations like this.

He finds a vein in Steve’s arm, which takes a few moments more than it should, Steve’s veins already hard to find. Here goes nothing, Sam thinks, and slides the needle in.

 

-

 

The first time—the very first time, when Sam was young and green and still in the U.S. military, long before he ever thought about supersoldiers or superspies or Avengers or anything like that—was in Afghanistan about a dozen miles from the border with Pakistan. Sam had only been on duty for a handful of months. He thought he was doing something smart, something brave. Turns out what he’d really been doing was something stupid, because the fellow soldier he was trying to give his blood to was bleeding internally and needed surgery, not a needle of blood in his arm, but what he had needed the most was more time. He had died a few meters from base camp, and wasn’t that just typical, really.

There were a few more times after that: only a few. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes people are already dead by the time you get to them, only their bodies don’t know it yet, and haven’t caught up to what’s going to happen to them.

 

-

 

Steve slips briefly back to consciousness about twenty minutes from Natasha’s chosen safe zone, where there is a surgeon that owes her about a dozen favors. Sam doesn’t notice Steve at first because he’s checking the IV, and his head is fucking pounding. He’s not dizzy—like he said, not squeamish—but he does feel about ready to pass out from exhaustion and a long-overdue adrenaline crash.

Then Steve moves: just a twitch of his fingers. Sam looks up, and there’s his heart again in his chest, fit to burst. Steve’s eyes are open (blue, shards of glass), the pallor of his face, his lips, but he says, quietly, “Sam?” and Sam knows he’s going to make it; that’s all it takes.

Sam grips Steve’s hand tight in his own. “Hey,” he says. He wants to say something funny, or something true, but somehow that’s all he can manage.

Natasha turns around. “Oh, thank God,” she says. “Steve, you fucking asshole.”

Steve’s face breaks into a smile before he passes out again, the pressure of his hand loosening around Sam’s, his fingers falling open, but Sam doesn’t let go.

 

-

 

The second time isn’t as bad as the first. For once they are in a hospital, and Steve’s in a bad state but he’s already mostly stable, with a whole bunch of monitors beeping and buzzing to remind Sam of this every second. Natasha isn’t there, but Sharon is, arguing with the doctor, who is concerned about what a blood transfusion given to a genetically altered supersoldier could do to Steve’s condition without the proper consideration beforehand.

Which is a fair point. Steve’s blood has got all sorts of weird stuff in it, and blood transfusions go wrong all the time with regular people’s blood. Of course, Sam hadn’t even bothered thinking about any of this last time, several hundred feet above the ground with the very real possibility of Steve’s death right in front of his face. And hey—it’s already worked once.

“We can’t just give him blood without considering the implications of what might happen to his system if we do so,” the doctor, a tired-looking older woman, explains patiently to an extremely impatient Sharon.

“So what are we supposed to do then, nothing?” Sharon demands. “What happens if he gets worse?”

“Agent Carter,” the doctor says, “should that situation arise, we will deal with it.”

As it happens (of course, of _fucking_ course, Steve, you asshole, Natasha was right about that), Steve does get worse: drastically, and suddenly. And while the doctor is deliberating her choices, Sam coughs lightly and says, “Uhm, well, you could give him my blood.”

“And why,” Dr. Choudhry says, sharply, “would I do that?”

“Because I’ve already given him some of my blood in the past, and nothing bad happened then, and if we wait any longer we’re not gonna have a choice.”

Dr. Choudhry, looking thoroughly annoyed, gestures to one of the nurses and tells Sam to roll up his sleeve. She probably isn’t getting paid enough to take care of death-defying supersoldiers. Sam hopes someone gets her a raise soon.

This time, a nurse inserts the IV line and Sam just has to watch. This time, his hands don’t shake. This time, Steve stabilizes in just over an hour, and Sam falls asleep a little while after while Sharon paces around the room, waiting for Steve to wake up. When he does, Steve looks down at his arm where Sam’s blood is saving his life (again), and says, “Okay, I’ve got to stop waking up like this.”

“You’re damn right,” Sharon says.

 

-

 

The third time is the worst.

They’re still looking for Bucky, only they’ve gotten themselves in way too fucking deep. They don’t have Natasha, who is off the grid working a favor for Maria. It’s just Steve and Sam and about a dozen Hydra agents who take a liberal, enthusiastic interpretation of ‘shitkicking’ and absolutely kick the shit out of Steve and Sam both.

Four men drag Sam away from Steve, who is fighting off the other nine masked people currently doing their best to fucking kill him, and Sam can’t get free because one of the people dragging him off has pressed a cloth over his mouth and it smells sick, sweet; it smells like a fucking rag drenched in chloroform because that’s what it is. Sam fights as hard as he can, fights back to try and get to Steve, who is limping, who looks up and sees Sam being dragged away and there’s light and fury and terrible hatred in his eyes, and then Sam doesn’t see anything else; then Sam doesn’t know what happens next.

When he wakes up, he doesn’t know where he is. He shoots upright, adrenaline like fire under his skin, and his head feels like it will crack open. He nearly punches Steve in the face before he realizes thathe isn't some Hydra goon leaning over him, and slowly Sam lets the tension fade.

Steve’s face is beat to hell: that’s what Sam notices first. “Jesus Christ, Steve." He lifts one hand to Steve’s mouth; Steve’s lower lip is split, jaggedly, and Sam presses his thumb against the break. “What happened?”

Steve lets out a hoarse, rough little laugh. “Dunno.” There’s a wheeze in his voice, a terrible sort of strain, and that’s when Sam realizes Steve is clutching his side and blood is streaming between his fingers.

“Oh my God, Steve.” Sam sits fully upright again and Steve leans back, leans away. The air is tacky and coppery and it makes Sam’s head swim. Sam isn’t badly injured—a few scrapes and bruises—but the drugging hadn’t been kind to him and it’s hard to focus.

First things first: Steve. Steve, bleeding (bleeding out, a treacherous voice in Sam’s head whispers), with a black eye and split lip and bruises blooming all over the back of his knuckles.

Steve closes his eyes. “That bad, huh.”

That bad. “I’ve seen worse,” Sam says; but the worse he’s seen has never ended well.

Steve tries to smile, which is somehow worse than anything else. “Stay still,” Sam says. He pushes himself to his feet, looks around for his gear. He doesn’t go on a mission without one of Natasha’s modified med kits anymore. But he can’t find it anywhere. “What happened?”

Steve takes a breath. “Couldn’t let them take you. Followed you.”

“There were nine guys on you,” Sam says.

Steve shrugs. “They were…waiting for me, when I found you. Got me pretty good.” Winces. “Had to drag you out of there. Didn’t know if you were gonna—gonna wake up.”

His voice is fading. Sam crouches by his side. “Steve,” he says clearly, forcefully, trying to bring him back. “Was my gear there?”

Steve doesn’t answer.

“Steve, c’mon, please,” Sam says, and he tries to keep his voice from revealing his panic. “Did they have my gear?”

Steve struggles. “Guess so,” he says finally. “Don’t remember.”

Jesus. “Don’t move, Steve,” Sam says. “I’m gonna be right back. I just have to grab my gear and I’ll be back.”

Steve’s eyes open. He fumbles for Sam’s wrist. His fingers slick, wet. “Don’t go.”

“I gotta, Steve,” Sam says. His voice betrays him, of course; breaks. “But I’ll be right back. I’ll be right back and then I’m gonna fix you up.”

Steve’s mouth twists: as if he might say something funny, something self-deprecating, or something horrible like how that might not be possible and maybe Sam should just get out now before more Hydra agents show up.

“Okay,” is all that Steve says instead, and Sam hopes that his panic and grief aren’t showing on his face. Steve lets go of Sam’s wrist. “Hurry, then.”

And Sam—he doesn’t know why, but there’s a part of him that says _what if this is the last chance you get_ and the rest of him denies that horrible possible-truth—Sam takes Steve’s face in both his hands, his beat up, bloodied, beautiful face, careful not to press too hard on any of the bruises, and kisses Steve gently on his broken mouth.

“I’ll be back,” he swears, and he doesn’t stay to watch Steve’s reaction, doesn’t stay to explain, or make excuses; he lets his hands fall and he gets to his feet and he hurries out of the room.

They’re in an underground Hydra base in upstate New York, all long tunnels and flickering lights and Sam never really got a chance to memorize the schematics of the place that Steve handed to him before they went in. But Steve, in his current condition, could not have carried Sam far, so the room where they took Sam must be nearby.

And if his gear isn’t there—well.

Being Steve Rogers is nothing like being Captain America, nothing like being an Avenger. The Avengers have supplies, resources, intel, people that Steve doesn’t have access to when he’s just himself. Avengers missions never go this bad, this fast; there’s always back-up; there’s always medical help when they need it. That's not true when it’s just Steve and Sam and they’re running all over the world trying to save someone who the Avengers don’t want to admit even exists. Steve is trying to do what he thinks is right—what he has to do—and Sam helps him because it’s all he can ever imagine himself doing. But they have no support out here when things go sideways. They went in alone and they’re either going to come back out alone, or they’re not coming back out at all.

Sam finds the room. The four agents who’d drugged him lie unconscious or dead on the floor. Sam doesn’t take the time to check. His gear—his wonderful, life-saving, Natasha-approved gear—is there, cast haphazardly into a corner behind the chair that the Hydra agents must have been trying to strap Sam onto before Steve showed up. Sam tries not to think about it. Tries not to wonder what the hell they were going to do to him. It’s not worth it, now.

When he gets back to Steve, Steve is only half-conscious, hardly aware of what is happening. His hair is matted and damp, his eyes closed, dark like bruises in the hollows of his face. He’s in a bad way. A real bad way, and Sam can tell; he’s seen this before, this sort of slow dying. Sam goes to his knees beside him and hears Natasha’s calm, clear voice in his head, telling him again how to slow the bleeding. “Hey,” Sam says; “hey, Steve, it’s me, I’m back, I’m here. Talk to me, baby.”

Steve says something that might be Sam’s name, might not be. “Good,” Sam says, shakily. He’s pulling gauze and medical tape out of the kit, trying not to drop the whole thing on the floor and scatter it everywhere. “Keep talking, I’m right here, I’ve got you right here.”

Steve mutters something Sam can’t hear, but Sam is busy examining the injury on Steve’s side. It’s jagged, cruel; a stab wound from a knife that got deep, got him real damn good.

Sam cleans it as best he can with the supplies he has and dresses it the way Natasha taught him. He wonders how she learned to do this, and decides that when—if— _when,_ damn it—they make it out of here, he’s going to do something real nice for her, because she damn well deserves it after this.

Finally, he gets the wound to stop bleeding. Mostly. But Steve is in absolutely no shape to be moved—needs to be stabilized before Sam can get him out of here.

Sam grits his teeth and starts unspooling the IV line from the kit. “Guess third time’s the charm, right?” he says, more to himself than to Steve, who is insensate, and he slides one needle into his skin, the other into Steve’s.

“Sam,” Steve says with shocking clarity. His eyes are fever bright.

“Shh,” Sam says. Because he can’t help himself, he leans over and kisses Steve again. “Shut up and gather your strength so I can get you out of here, all right?”

Steve slides his fingers across the back of Sam’s knuckles. “All right,” he says, he and passes out.

 

-

 

Sam doesn’t know how he manages to carry Steve out of there, never mind fly him the dozen miles to the nearest hospital, but his wings manage and he manages and somehow he does it. The doctors tell him that if he hadn’t done the blood transfusion when he did, Steve probably would have died, and would he mind giving a little more now?

Sam looks down at Steve in the hospital bed. “Yeah,” he says; “yeah, all right, okay,” and he has to be led to a chair so he’ll sit down and stop crying.

 

-

 

When Sam wakes (he doesn’t remember falling asleep but he must have, curled up on the chair beside Steve’s bed), Steve is already sitting upright and reading something on a tablet. The backs of his knuckles are bandaged, and he looks pale and tired, his black eye dark and purple against the rest of his face. There are five stitches in his lower lip. Aside from that he seems calm, scrolling on the tablet with one finger.

Sam, on the other hand, hurts all over: his head, his shoulders from carrying Steve all that way, his ribs, his heart. Maybe he should have let the nurses check him over like they wanted, but at the time it hadn’t seemed that important.

He doesn’t understand how Steve can be so calm, so quiet. How he can just sit there like nothing happened, like he didn’t almost die and leave Sam alone in the middle of a fucking Hydra base with no way to get him out.

“You’re awake,” Steve says without looking up.

Sam blinks at him. “So are you.”

Steve looks over at him now. Sam isn’t prepared to look directly at him, to see him clearly; he would look away but what’s the point of it? He’s always going to end up looking back.

Steve sets the tablet aside, and his left hand closes and opens on top of the bed sheets beside him. “Thanks to you.”

“Don’t,” Sam says. “Just—Steve—don’t.” He leans forward so that he’s closer to the bed and thinks about taking Steve’s hand, then doesn’t. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes,” Steve says. “Maybe. Most of it, I think.”

Sam nods. Looks down at Steve’s bandaged hand against the white bed sheets. Thinks of the color of blood, and of how some stains don’t ever come out.

“I’m okay,” Steve says. “Sam—” His voice makes Sam look up, meet his gaze. “I’m all right.”

“This time,” Sam says, without knowing that he’s going to say it, and Steve falls silent.

Sam sits still, not sure what to do. Then he reaches out and covers Steve’s hand with his. “Can you just—promise me that you won’t let this happen again." I don’t know how many times I can give my blood to you until there’s none of me left.

Steve turns his hand so that it is palm-up beneath Sam’s, and he closes his finger over Sam’s knuckles. “I’ll try.”

And that’s going to have to be good enough.

“You kissed me,” Steve adds suddenly, and Sam startles, just slightly.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I guess I did a little.” He tries to gauge Steve’s expression and can’t. “Sorry.”

Steve’s grip on Sam's hand tightens. “Apology not accepted,” he says quietly, barely more than a whisper, and Sam doesn’t understand, only then Steve shifts on the bed, just slightly, and brings his other hand up to the back of Sam’s neck and pulls him in and Steve kisses him, stitches in his lip and all, and Sam thinks, _oh;_ he thinks, _finally;_ he thinks, _you better keep your promises, Rogers,_ and kisses Steve back.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
